"How Kid Brady Joined the Press" - Pearson's Magazine (US), May 1906
As addressed in the annotations, much of Psmith, Journalist (serialized 1909-10) was reworked into the American edition of The Prince and Betty (1912). But it turns out that that story has even earlier roots.
I’ve been reading Wodehouse’s Kid Brady stories, serialized in Pearson’s Magazine 1905-07. Not to be confused with the Wyoming native of the same name in Psmith, Journalist, this English-born orphan uses Kid Brady as a fighting name, preferring to be Edward Darrell in private. His career unfolds much differently than Wyoming-Brady’s, and the stories read like an alternate universe. But the fifth of these, “How Kid Brady Joined the Press,” published May 1906, nearly two years before the serialization of The Lost Lambs (Mike and Psmith), contains some suspiciously familiar elements.
A rich, bored Englishman who invests in a paper in order to amuse himself with the apparent lack of libel laws in America. The Kid being roped in as fighting editor. “Then give your editor, when he arrives, the compliments of Mr. Bodkin, Mr. Aubrey Bodkin of the National Theater, and tell him that Mr. Bodkin does not lightly forget.” A passing reference to some (possibly invented) member of the staff called Smith, who’s always turning out “bitter” stuff–”he thinks the proprietor likes it.”
Knowing Wodehouse’s habit of reusing material, these similarities can hardly be coincidental. The story’s worth looking over, as are the notes the editors of Madame Eulalie provide, in which it is suggested that the Smith mention might mean that Wodehouse was already developing Psmith material as early as 1906.